One of the best known identities in the global print industry Benny Landa has been awarded entrepreneur of the decade by Israeli business daily Globes. Landa is also one of Israel’s major technology investors, a sizeable chunk of his $830m has been set aside to invest in Israeli start up tech businesses. He is also a major philanthropist.

Landa Digital Printing chief executive Yishai Amir told PrintWeek: “Following an incredibly successful Drupa for us, and as part of our planned ramp-up towards commercialisation next year, we are currently recruiting for a number of positions within Landa Digital Printing worldwide.”

This month's issue of ProPrint highlights 15 of the most interesting drupa digital press launches, all of them inkjet presses, some cutsheet, some webfed, ranging in size from A3 up to B1 in sheetfed, some for commercial print, some for packaging both folding carton and flexibles. What this dazzling array of technology tells us is that digital inkjet print will become a major force in commercial print, and that the technology developers are spending vast sums to get it right, which shows their confidence in the market, which is good news for all of us.

In a video interview, Gerry Mulvaney, Landa’s European Sales Manager, highlights the advantages and opportunities the B1 (41 in.) Landa S10 Nanographic Printing Press will bring to the sign and digital market including quality, speed, substrate-friendliness, and lowest cost-per-page. He points out the demonstrated significant progress in Nanography® since sowing the first seeds at Drupa 2012.

Clearly the baton has passed from conventional print to digital print. As Benny Landa stated at the end of the show: “Drupa 2016 will be remembered as the inflection point in the industry's transition from mechanical printing to digital… It seems that the market leaders in packaging, commercial printing and in publishing have come to the realization that they simply must go digital.”

How does Benny differ [from Steve Jobs] then?
I’ve worked with a lot of brilliant people and they all had a vision of exactly where they wanted to go, but Jobs was more merciless than most. Benny tends to be more of a benefactor, more of a father figure – but he also finds the best people and they work night and day for him. The difference is that you get the feeling they would do that even if he didn’t ask, because they just want what he wants.